I got this email today;
Good day to you out there, My name is Charles Phey, I'm from South Well-fleet, MA. Need some artwork for an exhibition,We have being buying and collating different artwork samples from across the world. why surveying i came through your work, going through it, my eyes caught this particular work, i will like to have it this month.please let me know if the piece is available, if yes let me have the detailed price and more information about it. i will be waiting to read from you.Regards.
Usually these are more non- specific. In this one the author took the time to take lots of information from my website. I assume that this is a credit card scam that would start if I responded. Much like the Nigerian "I have money in the US that I need you to get for me". Artists beware!
Replies
Caroline, unfortunately, I am still recovering from a 17 day marathon art fair trip which included 10 show days 3 days of travel and 3 setup days. You can believe I'm not going to try that again. I'm still exhausted. When I recover I will write a comprehensive blog on how we can protect ourselves from scammers. Btw, don't think you are safe because you use a Mac. Scamming is cross platform.
Someone wondered how the scammers got their email address. That's an easy one. Google and now Facebook are data miners. That is they follow you wherever you go on the internet and record where you are going, so that they can tailor advertising on the web pages you go to, to your interests. Data miners gather email addresses into huge database that gets sold to anyone willing to buy that info. Where do you think Facebook gets all of it's money? Why do you think Facebook encourages you to post all your private stuff on your page? Big brother isn't watching, but, big money is.
I once got so fed up with these scams that I replied, with a website. It was not my website, it was for various "adult"
products. The next day I received a lovely order for over $200 worth of "product". I felt terrible for involving a innocent company in my frustrations. As far as I know they were not approached, I was the "owner of the company". We all get these, it is so bad that one time my stepmother was looking for a specific artist and asked for my help. I knew of this artist, and approached him at a show, asked if he could fill an order and ship it, to Hawaii. He replied " I dont ship out of the united states". My stepmother filled the space above her fireplace with someone elses art. This guy was obviously burned bad, and now Hawaii is no longer a part of the United States.
Artists beware? Let's try human beings beware. I almost hesitate to post a response here except that it allows me to blast those stupid enough to respond to the Nigerian scam, or any of the myriad of email scams that appear daily in everyone's inbox. If I get this out of my system I may start to feel better after that grueling 4 day experience in Ann Arbor. Purging is good. In fact, anyone how ever falls for any of these scams deserves to get scammed. In fact, you should have to pay an extra 10% fee if you even think about falling for this. Call it a stupid tax. Let's see, there are the Nigerian scams, the "you've won the lottery" scams, the Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, etc. email test scam, the Paypal scam, the name you bank account was suspended so give us your account info scam, not to mention the buy viagra or name your counterfeit drug scam. Did I leave anything out?
Look, consider that for every 100 emails that you get, only 1 is from a friend or something that you wanted. All the rest want your money and mostly through unscrupulous means. It's a good idea to never read those posts, let alone consider whether they are legit. Oh, and never, never, never open an attachment unless you enjoy losing all your data and have a desire to reformat your hard drive.
From time time I post info on how to keep yourself from being attacked by the hordes of scammers out there in cyberspace. You might want to read them if you see one posted.
"my eyes caught..." is always a dead giveaway. And while there is indeed a South Wellfleet, MA a lovely village on outer Cape Cod, there is definitely no South Well-Fleet. Scam, Scam, Scam...
martha
Michael, thanks for alerting everyone to this scam. While everyone who replied to you were aware of the scam, there have to be many others who are completely unaware. Everyone should know about these scams.
I also thought this was one of those Nigerian scams. They seem to catch people off guard every year. I heard, too, that they send you a check or money order order for more than your piece. So, not only do you lose your artwork to them, you lose the over payment that you send to them. In effect, you are paying them to take your artwork! Then, they probably sell it on line like on ebay.
These scams must be bringing in loads of money otherwise they would drop off. Thanks for the timely alert.
Jacki B
Clues that it's a scam:
1. extremely poor grammar/phrasing/spelling.
2. what "particular work"???
3. No phone number, who are you with/from/ recommended by?
I get probably 10 of these a month and I mark them all as Phishing Scams in Hotmail. The most sophisticated one was someone who pharmed Naples National exhibitor list and actually said she saw me at the show and quoted the piece that represented me in their program and wanted to send me a Western Union money gram or whatever shady thing it is that they do. So yes, be on your guard at all times.
I received the same email yesterday. I wrote a response with the price of the artwork he mentioned in his email. He immediately wrote back saying he was collecting artwork around the world and exhibiting them in the UK. So I asked where in the UK, since I have family and friends living there and they would like to attend.......of course I haven't heard back from him.
My initial thoughts were that this was a scam because of the misuse of the english language, but with everyone texting these days the english language has gone out the window, but you always have to go with your gut instinct.
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